The NaBloPoMo writing prompt for today was a bit dull for me so I decided to pick one from the prompt forum: Time travel has been invented. You have to go back 15 years and explain the concept of social networking and blogging to yourself.

I distinctly remember using GeoCities after high school in 1994. I remember updating a personal webpage and being relieved when the “weblog” finally came about (thought it was supposed to be for news only). Everything was easier once we had a way of updating posts without going in and totally rejigging the front index page each and every time.

So explaining this to a twenty year old me would be all right, I guess. Granted the whole “everyone is online” situation would be odd but really cool to 20 year old me. I remember back then having AOL was the “in” thing (even though I tried it and never liked its restrictive browsing capabilities”). If I explained Twitter to myself I would explain that it’s like one big, on-going, never-ending chat that includes celebrities that ignore your comments. Yeah, it really doesn’t sound like that much fun in 1996 either, does it? Especially when a lot of people use it for link sharing (which is cool to a point) and complaining about businesses (which is handy – to a point), people they don’t know in person (we called that gossiping 15 years ago) and television (okay, that’s fun.)

Facebook on the other hand would be cool to 20 year old me. I mean, think of it, being in college, as Zuckerburg originated it, and being able to have everyone’s business in full view. Well, we had this in the 2000s, as I’ve mentioned on here before – LiveJournal. That got to be a pain. You let dramatic people have access to so much personal info that it just leads to chaos. That’s why it was so hard for a lot of us to bother with Facebook – we were use to going online and being fairly anonymous.

Now we’re us. We can tell everyone where we worked, what our family looks like, where we went over the weekend and where we’re going on vacation. Nothing’s a secret anymore. So being 20 year old me who had to figure out Smashing Pumpkins lyrics by listening to the songs would have the whole wide world of music at the click of a link.